As the informational world has grown in size and become more connected, methods of searching for information have become ubiquitous and essential. To be sure, the wealth of information available on the Internet is far less useful if the desired information is difficult to find. In contrast to exploratory information seeking, in which any and all items relevant to a query are desired, known item searching is a type of search directed toward finding specific objects (e.g., a specific book, a periodical, a video, a song, or a database record). In some ways, known item searching is analogous to visiting a library looking for a particular book, rather than going to a library looking for information on a particular topic.
Computer-implemented methods of known item searching are used in a variety of applications. Such methods are generally precise, meaning that any inaccurate information conveyed in a known item lookup request will cause conventional methods to miss the known item, even if accurate information is also submitted. The result is a conservative paradigm in known item searching: it is preferable, using conventional methods, to withhold potentially incorrect information (e.g., a “best guess”) rather than to submit the potentially incorrect information and risk a search miss.